Ripple Wins Court Fight as Judge Rejects SEC Appeal
Judge denies SEC’s motion to appeal in the Ripple case.
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US District Judge Analisa Torres denied the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) request to appeal part of her recent decision in its high-profile lawsuit against Ripple Labs over its sales of the digital token XRP.
In July, Judge Torres found that some of Ripple’s institutional sales of XRP were unregistered securities offerings in violation of federal law. However, she ruled that other XRP distributions by Ripple did not qualify as securities transactions.
The SEC quickly sought to appeal the latter part of Torres’ order, arguing that it set a dangerous precedent for applying securities laws to crypto assets. But today, Torres rejected the SEC’s appeal bid, finding it did not meet the legal standard for an early appeal before trial.
“If [a] Buyer then purchases XRP from the exchange with the intention of later selling XRP for a profit, she would have purchased XRP “with an expectation of profit,” but that motive was not “derived from the entrepreneurial or managerial efforts of others,” wrote Judge Torres.
The rejection of the SEC’s motion to appeal is seen as a significant victory for Ripple, which has been fighting the lawsuit for several years. The lawsuit alleges that Ripple violated investor-protection laws by selling over $1.3 billion worth of XRP starting in 2013 without registering the offers and sales of XRP.
The SEC has not yet commented on the ruling, and it is unclear whether it will seek to appeal the decision further. However, the rejection of the motion to appeal means that the case will now proceed to trial, which is scheduled for April next year.
XRP is up 3% over the last 24 hours, according to CoinGecko.
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